Eggplants and Supermarkets: A Memoir

Type… type… erase erase… pause… stalk on Instagram… YouTube… type some more… shut the computer down, go out and buy samosa pale kwa Sanchez, pass by the barbers’ to pick up my USB drive, get back to the house, let Patricia in and leave out Puss in the cold (she has a boyfriend so…), chill with Patricia listening to her chastising me for being mean with milk, I decide to tell you this story instead.

I love supermarkets. I do. There’s people who love money, others love their women, another group loves their children, and then there’s me, who loves supermarkets. There’s something about the aisles that has me going. The shelves stocked with things, most of which I buy just to hoard and some of which, like every normal person, I like to imagine myself buying. I like imagining myself buying a leather jacket and two brooms, adding Nan baby formula and eye drops just for the shit of it. I like imagining how the people around me will look at me as I lay these items out on the counter.

“He is such a young father,” I can hear them saying.

“I wonder what the brooms are for, maybe he is an improv comedian who works with brooms. Like the puppeteers and their puppets,” says a hefty middle aged woman. The kind that reaches out to pinch your nose and looks almost eager to invite you to an afternoon of baking and tea and crocheting.

"Why did he take the biggest trolley? He only has 4 items. The youth of today are a wasteful lot. In my time, we had to fit whole bottles of bleach in our mouths and two bales of unga between our thighs. There was nothing like trolleys or cashiers or paying back then. Life was cheap, but you had to run. Fast. I wonder why.” I also wonder why Aunty Ciru, I also wonder why.

“He looks old enough. Maybe I should ask him to buy me two bottles. He might want to keep one bottle to himself though. He looks like the thirsty guzzler type.” A sixteen year old boy is thinking. And to that sixteen year old boy I say now in the presence of all of you, dearly beloved: I wouldn’t try that if I were you.

“That jacket will really bring out the rolls on his stomach, his strongest feature, the reason ladies swarm around him, all dying to rub the mound of fat lounging on his abdominal area.”

Okay, that is probably just me.

The cashier will look me in the eye and ask me if I have a loyalty card. I will pull out my small Safaricom wallet and take out a washed out card. Colors almost non-existent from years of being sat on during hot Nairobi days as sweat seeps through every fiber of my jeans. I have a feeling I am painting myself as this sweaty mass of fat who like samosas but oh well, such is life.

The cashier, still holding my gaze will take the card from me and I will hold on to it just a little harder for a second. The pulling on either end creating a weird eye-contact-tug-of-war kind of thing that makes every one behind me in the queue uncomfortable. They will start shifting their weight from leg to leg and others will clear their throats trying to break the intensity of the staring game going one between this wielder of baby formula and brooms and this keeper of the cash register password.

I have my spot along Muindi Mbingu Street in town. Tuskys chap chap. Opposite City market, next to Jamia mosque, seated side by side with Jamia mall, like two market women on a lazy Tuesday afternoon. All bundled up in warm clothing; jackets and rolls of headscarves, as they sip on their tea and nibble on chapati.

Even I am surprised at how fake that sounds. LOL. They are DEVOURING piping hot tea straight from the thermos flask sitting in a red plastic basket and chapati from the same basket, four at a time.

This supermarket is everything I want to be when I finally get to the ripe, mature age of mind-your-own-business. Desirable. Rich. Well experienced in servicing the human race. Ever busy.

7:30 pm on a regular Thursday evening finds people doing regular city-dweller things: talking over over-priced coffee in poorly lit, stuffy coffee shops. Walking briskly holding hands talking about nothing in particular, being all too aware of the blood rushing to places where the sun don’t shine. Waiting for a bus to take them home at the bus termini, where they meet people with whom they will talk during the whole bus ride while some of us eavesdrop mercilessly while pretending to be asleep, laughing at their rather dry jokes because we are now part of a big family which loves trading stories.

Me? 7:30 pm on a regular Thursday evening? Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Marching onwards with a bloated stomach, burping loudly much to the discomfort of the humans around me, the evening wind on my oily face with one mission: to smell like angel breath! There is only one place where that service is offered. Muindi Mbingu Street. I walk into the supermarket and I am met with a thunderous applause. A king coming back home to his loyal subjects. A father coming home to his overfed children. Or rather an overfed father coming home to his children. A prosperous hooker coming back to her corner on the street. There is smiles all around me as people acknowledge my presence. The queues are as long as ever. There is an unspoken code here; you do not ask to be excused for ease of movement, you just pass, let your being be one with that of the others around you as you make your way to the aisle. The aisle of dreams, the aisle of wonder, the aisle of possibility. The perfume aisle.

People who know me know I smell best in the evening. I walk around and immediately, people want to touch my cloak. (Yes, I wear cloaks in the evenings, it gets chilly.) I walk slowly and deliberately in the evenings. 1. Because I am seriously over stuffed and I can barely move. 2. Because I smell like a precious bouquet of carnations sprinkled with talcum powder.

Ladies and gents, this wasn’t a post intended to inspire you to be a better human being. No. Today we remember our beloved goat January aka Janu, who went to be with the perfume angels this time last year. Rest In Perfume, a remembrance: Janu Rest In Perfume

So what did I make today? I don’t know, I am just a spontaneous human being who moonlights as a perfume connoisseur. How about eggplants? Yes, that emoji. And no, nothing further than the emoji. Just the emoji. I am starting to get uncomfortable now so I will move along swiftly. In my mind, this paragraph is part of a YouTube video starring yours truly where I share my eggplant cooking skills with you and now I am getting even more uncomfortable thinking about it as a YouTube video.

Baked Eggplants, Fried Matoke (Bananas), Vegetable Rice and Spicy Pea Stew.

Ingredients:

For the Eggplants,

Three full eggplants

Bread crumbs

Salt

Mixed spices

For the Matoke

Three unpeeled green bananas

Salt

Vegetable oil for frying

For the Stew

1 cup peas

Two bulb onions

1 green bell-pepper

3 large carrots

3 large tomatoes

Paprika, Chilies spice, Mixed spices and Ginger powder

Method:

Start with the stew.

Slice the tomatoes, cut the onions and bell pepper and dice the carrots. Put 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a sufuria and heat. Put in the onions and fry them until they begin to brown. Add the tomatoes and fry them to a pulp, throw in the carrots until they are almost soggy and add the bell peppers. Cover for 2-3 minutes over medium heat. Stir and add the peas. Stir them well and make sure they are all mixed nicely before adding water to cover. Let this cook for 15-20 minutes then uncover, add in the salt and spices, stir and cover once more, allowing it to cook over low heat.

Whilst the stew is cooking:

Skin the matoke and wash. Cut them lengthwise and boil for 7-9 minutes. Add salt to the boiling water. Cut up the eggplants width-wise. This produces eggplant circles which is the shape we are looking for. *If you are giggling, you deserve a slit throat at this point. Put these in a Ziploc bag and add the salt and the spices. Shake them up and refrigerate for up to 20 minutes.

Check on the matoke. Take them out and drain them. Heat enough vegetable oil in a pan and add in the banana slices. The matoke should be golden and crisp on the outside. This takes 6-8 minutes over medium heat.

Take out the eggplants and set them on a baking tray. Coat them with bread crumbs and bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes. Once done, fry them until the bread crumbs turn golden brown. You can get the vegetable rice recipe here: Vegetable rice recipe